Fluorite (blue over green octahedra) (ex Chet Lemanski Collection)

Item Description

Here we have an early Xianghualing Fluorite from the late 1990s (originally purchased from the Rocksmiths) featuring a style and color rarely seen from the locality. This small cabinet display piece features a sharp, gemmy, prominent, beautiful blue color octahedral Fluorite crystal along with a handful of smaller blue Fluorites which are overgrowing a previous generation of soft green Fluorite octahedra with no matrix. You rarely see two generations of Fluorite overgrowing one another from this mine, let alone with different colors of the same habit overgrowing one another. My favorite aspect of the piece is that the main Fluorite crystal (which measures 2.5 cm) has a beautiful banded "stripe" (presumably from pocket clay inclusion), creating a beautiful chevron shape that accents the outline of the crystal istelf. Very beautiful in person, hard to photograph, but if you're a fan of Fluorites, Chinese minerals, or if you have an affinity for specimens from this particular locality, don't let this one get away. From the collection of Chester ("Chet") S. Lemanski Jr. of Browns Mills, New Jersey (https://www.mindat.org/user-461.html). Collection #CL. Chet was born 1947 in started collecting minerals circa 1957. He worked briefly as a drill runner at the famous Sterling Mine, in Ogdensburg, New Jersey and from 1987 to 1990 he helped convert the mine into a public access mining museum. He has held the role of treasurer, vice president and president of the Franklin-Ogdensburg Mineralogical Society (FOMS), and has been a board member and vice president of the Franklin Mineral Museum. The rare copper arsenate, Lemanskiite was named in his honor in 1999.